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You are tired, the past few months of work have really drained every bit of energy from you and now all you can think about is that three day holiday to London or Brighton or Paris, whichever tickles your fancy. The hotel is booked, the car is jampacked with all the bags and you already have all the best restaurants and bars in the city sized up. You surprise your partner with your fantastic plan that you have been keeping a secret for the past three months and boom you are finally on the road. Now what if I told you instead of just spending money on that holiday, on the fuel, hotel, food and drink, you could actually return from the three day break to paradise with more money than you spent or at the very least break even.

Don’t believe me well let’s see exactly how:

If you are going away for three days you are not going to need your parking space are you? With JustPark you can rent out your parking space for the specified days and make around 15 or 20 pounds depending on the city you live in.

Now when you leave you are not going to need your room or home, are you? With Airbnb you can rent out your room or home for the specified days and get around 75 to 100 pounds depending on the city you live in.

So far so good, you have already made some money from two possessions of yours you clearly weren’t going to use. Now on your way from let’s say Milton Keynes to London, with Uber (provided you are already registered as a Uber Driver) you could pick someone up on your way and make enough money to pay for your fuel, congestion charge and more. You were already driving there anyways so what is the problem with an added guest in your car as long as his hygienic levels are up to scratch and he doesn’t suffer from involuntary flatulence.

On your way from Milton Keynes to London, everything is going splendidly, you have already been payed for your parking space, your room, an added guest to join you on your journey and now with Roadie you could possibly find a couple of small yet heavy parcels that need delivering into London and you could get paid handsomely, just to put these parcels in the boot of your car and deliver it somewhere along your route.

So in total you have been paid for two possessions you weren’t going to use and for picking up someone and something to join you on the same route you were already going to follow. Can’t get much sweeter then that can it? Well it can! As an added final bonus, let’s say you or your partner like sharing a ton of pictures or videos or social updates whilst on you holiday instead of using FaceBook or Twitter or any of the other pin-gram’s out there, if you use Tsu (use http://www.tsu.co/airesao to join) you can actually make money. Yes you read that correctly, you can get paid to share stuff on your social media profile. Tsu shares 90% of all revenue with its users.

The world has changed dramatically in these past five years and the opportunities for the general population to earn money from areas previously unexplored have exploded. Therefore next time you go on holiday be sure to use these 5 websites or apps to help you come back with a smile on your face and a little extra in your pocket.

Marks and Spencer plc, also known as M&S is a major British multinational retailer headquartered in London, listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. M&S was founded in 1884 by Michael Marks a Belarusian Jew from Slonim and Thomas Spencer, a cashier from Skipton in North Yorkshire. Employing over 85 thousand employees worldwide, M&S stores specialize in the selling of luxury clothing, home and food products.

Things could be going better for the multinational as it is facing huge controversy and backlash from the Christianity Population in the UK (which accounts for roughly over 29 Million People) after The words ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus Christ’ had been placed on a list of banned words by Marks & Spencer and couldn’t be used in gift messages. Customers purchasing flowers who tried to add a free message containing them were prevented from completing their order. An on-screen error, which pops up if any blocked words are entered, read: ‘Sorry, there’s something in your message we can’t write.’

The retailer had added the term to a list of banned words to prevent abuse – despite allowing ‘Buddha’ and ‘Mohammed’. The IT blunder has now been rectified after endless calls and messages from upset users came flooding in.

A spokesman for Marks & Spencer said: ‘An automatic phrase checker is in place to prevent the use and misuse of certain words and it includes hundreds of words of varying nature.

This is not the first time it has faced backlash from the Christianity population. In fact it is the second time in less than two years. In mid-2013 Marks & Spencer was left facing a boycott from hundreds of customers furious at the store’s decision to allow Muslim staff to refuse to serve customers buying alcohol or pork products.

The policy was revealed after customers trying to buy pork or alcohol from a Muslim shop assistant in a London store were told they would have to use another till or employee because of the cashier’s religion. At the time a Facebook campaign calling on people to boycott the store attracted hundreds of ‘likes’ within just a couple of hours of being live. Comments featured that gained a lot of attention included “If you have Christian workers who wish to refuse the sale of ladies garments to male homosexuals or men’s trousers to lesbians, I do hope you will equally stand by those workers’ religious or personal beliefs…

“Or perhaps if an atheist worker notices a customer purchasing hot cross buns during Easter and wishes to refuse sale to that particular customer based on beliefs that conflict with their own, I do hope you will not punish such workers for their actions surrounding refusal of sale…

Similar to then, today the M&S Facebook Page has seen a steep rise in negative comments and feedback from upset customers.

Personally I don’t think that M&S are trying to upset any religion or faith. In fact I am pretty confident that this huge controversy was probably caused by a single IT employee that either updated the system manually or made it live without testing it first. Therefore I do think that their internal protocol and systems need to be updated to prevent future mishaps like this. All changes and updates to the website need to go to a Beta site which cannot be seen by the general public and intense tests need to performed before anything goes live.

It will be very exciting to see how M&S will deal with the backlash on their Social Media accounts and how they cope with their Easter Marketing campaigns and in fact the Christmas (the clue is the word) battle for customers with their competing retailers. Although as we have seen before Xmas is a long time away and by then all will be forgotten and forgiven especially if Marks and Spencer’s bring out a Multimillion pound heart-warming Xmas TV ad.

Having worked in the Higher Education Industry I always felt that it was an Industry on the verge of digital disruption. And boy was it disrupted. Most Universities had already included an online distance learning program by this time however some such as Harvard and Stanford went a step further by offering Mooc’s (Massive Open Online Courses) that are free for an unlimited amount of students and you only pay if you want an official degree or diploma from the university in question.

Now even though this did change the education Industry for the better these courses and learning materials are still controlled by each institution. But what if I told you that there is a range of courses most of which you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else taught for the people by the people?

I first heard about Udemy (Click here to have a look) when I read that its top 10 instructors had made just over a total of $1.6 Million. This did catch my attention but what striked me even more were some of the reviews by their students stating ‘this course has helped me set up my own profitable business’ or ‘this course has allowed me to get a job without having gone to university’. A perfect win win situation I thought, the instructors were making a lot of money and the students were benefiters so I decided to give it a go.

I launched my own SEO Course – How I made $200K in one year from SEO (Click here to preview it). I decided that if I was going to do this course I wanted it to be complete from the first step to the last chockfull of all the tips and tricks I had picked up throughout my decade of experience. I also wanted to include a section of how I am able to profit from my own SEO websites so that potential students could benefit financially from their learning. I spent a lot of time developing the course and it seems to have paid off. In just under a month I have had 1796 students join my course which is priced at around £44 or $69 and to have such a big following in such a short amount of time leaves me dumbfounded and a very proud man.

Udemy does take a 50% cut if the student has enrolled in your course through their website or a 25% cut if the student has enrolled in your course through your own website or promotional activity. Now the 50% might be a bit off putting at first but when you realise that the majority of students will find your course through the Udemy website and the levels of traffic it receives daily is extremely large it is a very fair cut.

Now not only have I taught on Udemy but I have also learnt a world of information that has changed my world. I know my SEO very well, I know how to make money from it but I am not that great when it comes to making money on eBay or Amazon or YouTube or Twitter. You can even learn how to do yoga, radio jingles or even how to become a football agent.

The courses that I took that have helped me profit from the platforms mentioned above and I really recommend that you do too are:

How I Make $2000 A Month On YouTube – And No Filming by Alun Hill

Kindle Secrets: How I wrote a Best Selling eBook In 72 hours by Benjamin Wilson

eBay Secrets: Make Money on eBay and Spend No Money Upfront by Matt Bernstein

The great unique selling points of Udemy are: the ability to preview the course you are interested in, the 30 day money back guarantee if the course fails to impress you, the ability to learn on the go – on your iPhone or Ipad and a certificate of completion. Therefore if you are considering being a student then it is really a no brainer.

Alternatively if you think you are an expert in your field or especially if you think that there aren’t many instructors already teaching this subject then I would say teaching on Udemy is a must for you. However one final piece of advice I would give you before signing up as an instructor and listing your lecture for sale is that you enrol yourself in these two courses:

How I Make $4000 A Week From Udemy Courses With No Marketing by Alun Hill

These two courses will give you the insight and confidence to know exactly what you are doing before filming your course so that you know the best way to teach, market and sell your lecture in the most efficient and less time consuming manner.

Thanks for reading, hope to see your course live soon and to see you learning and earning.

*Until the 28th of February 2015, you can get 65% off any course on Udemy including mine by clicking on this link here, searching for the course you want and entering the coupon code START215

Hey Guys and Girls. Welcome to another installment of quick, easy and most importantly free tips regarding any online and marketing activity around today. Nice to have you here, now get a nice cup of coffee and enjoy.

Why you should have a blog or better yet why you need a blog!

Do you want to earn extra income every month online?

Do you want to possibly travel the world whilst earning money online to fund your travel?

Are you in marketing and want to learn physically how to improve your game?

Do you want to try and test different strategies and see first hand what works and what doesn’t and then possibly implement these in your professional career?

Do you want to improve your CV and boost your chances of a promotion or your dream Job?

If your answer is yes to any of the above then you have to set up a blog, you just have to – plain and simple.

How to Start Your Blog Immediately

Step 1: Think of a name for your new blog, this could include your own name, your pet’s name, a made up name, anything you want. (1 minute)

Step 2: Go to 123-reg and see if your domain is available, I recommend a .com, .org, .net or a local domain such as .co.uk, .fr, .de, etc. If there is no option available try the same extensions but a different name until you reach your ideal name. (1 minute)

Step 3: Register your domain and wordpress hosting with JustHost (Click here to check them out) – I really recommend them because they are super cheap, they have a one click wordpress hosting option and their customer service is faultless. (2 minutes)

Step 4: Install wordpress with one click on the domain. (1 minute)

There you go you are all set up with a blog in less than 5 minutes and ready to start blogging. But to start perfecting the site I would recommend you also do the following:

How to perfect the look and functionality of your blog:

Step 5: Purchase a professional Theme / Layout for your blog so that it looks the part to fit your vision. I would recommend you use ThemeForest (See their site here)as they have very affordable prices and thousands of templates to choose from. (5 minutes)

Step 6: Set up a Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus account for your blog so you can share your latest posts and start up a following or an online ‘cult. (5 minutes)

Step 7: Set up a Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools account for your website so you can track how many people come to your website and if there are any errors on the site. (5 minutes)

Step 8: Install SEO WordPress Plugin by Mervin so you can change title, description and include your tracking accounts on the site. (1 minute)

Step 10: Rinse and Repeat the step above whenever you have a spare moment or you are bored.

Boom, done and dusted you are now officially online. Once you start putting your thoughts or views on the web you will find yourself researching on how to market your blog and then once your marketing efforts start taking effect you will find yourself researching on how to monetize this traffic and once you are earning you will find yourself researching on how to increase the conversion rate in order to increase your revenue.

For less than the price of a coffee a week or even a coffee a month you now have the chance to potentially earn more than you have ever dreamed of from the comfort of your sofa whilst surfing the web in your jammies. You will be hooked trust me and you will learn more than you ever wished to learn.

Personally for me when I first got into SEO I wanted to play around on my own blog and test different SEO strategies. I could try and push the boundaries and see what worked, what didn’t, replicate the goods, avoid the negatives, if any activity of mine got my blog penalized then definitely avoid it with regards to the corporate sites I was employed to work on.

Funnily enough what turned out as a one hour a week practical experiment has not only taught me more than any job could ever do but has also rewarded me financially more than any job has ever done.

So why are you still working for someone or why do you not become a full time blogger? This is a question I get asked regularly and even though I have posted snapshots proving how much I have earned in the past or roadmaps to the success of some of my blogs including full details such as the url, traffic, metrics this question will always be asked. Personally I have used the money to fund the purchase of my home and most importantly a revolutionary product I am planning on launching in the coming months. For many people the motivation will be from the earnings they gain but for some it will be the experience they go through.

The most fascinating part of the whole process for me was not the regular payments or the overall amount of money I made at the end of the year but the time I changed the color of my site’s calls to action and doubled the conversion rate & revenue or the time I Increased my social media efforts and shot up the search engine ranks within days. Those are the most fascinating events to me and that helped me become a better professional and a better SEO’er (if that is a word).

I am sure if you ask the founder of The Huffington Post or Forbes which part they enjoyed the most throughout the birth of their companies till now I am confident that even though all the nice perks billions can buy they would say it was the experience of turning an idea into reality and seeing it succeed. Better yet ensuring it succeeded. I mean a mansion, a Bugatti or a five star holiday is also right their near the top but I believe the experience, the ‘journey’ triumphed over all.

A recommendation I have instilled in all the companies I have worked for recently is for that all employees start up a blog, even if they touch it once a month or once a year at least they start one but sadly I have come across every single excuse there is including the famous ‘I just don’t have the time’ one. Well what if I told you it takes less than five minutes to get a blog started? And an hour a week or a couple of hours a month to maintain? Don’t believe me well than give the above steps a try.

Hi Guys and Girls and welcome to the SEO tricks and tips people would charge you for. Here I will give you all the juicy details on how to do SEO and it’s all for free… You’re more than welcome! hehe

First and Foremost to gain any significant amount of traffic or in order to start any SEO project the first step is Keyword Research. And here is the best tool for the job and most underrated too: SEMRush (Click here to have a look). Whatever the niche or business as a whole your website may be in it is crucial that we know what keywords exactly we should be targeting and that starts with Keyword Research. We just can’t go in Blind. If we do we run the risk of trying to rank for keywords that have no searches at all.

So it is also public knowledge that people have been using Google Adwords Keyword tool for Keyword Research for a long time now. And it does work but Google doesn’t give you the complete picture and with SEO the beauty is you can always get the perfect picture. There is a tool for pretty much everything and the tool for Keyword Research isnt the Adwords tool anymore unfortunately but SEMRUSH. Let me show you why:

Let’s say we wanted to set up a site to promote Steam Irons. It is pretty niche, good search volume, there is quite some money to be paid as an affiliate and not a lot of competition. Just pure perfect sweetness of a nectar niche!

So going on the Adword Keyword Tool we would input the keyword relating to our niche:

Steam Irons, Best Steam Irons and Steam Iron Reviews, select United Kingdom for our target country or you could select whichever country you prefer and this what comes up:

Next when we delve into the stats more we start to see some flaws, keywords that appear that shouldn’t and most importantly keywords that DON’T APPEAR, that I spotted in just few seconds of sieving through so you can believe that there are many more that are not appearing.

Now I am not saying do not use the Adwords Keyword Tool but I’m saying use it as a secondary step or as a backup and integrate it with SEMRush because with the combined use of these two you will fill in the gaps and get all of the relevant keywords within the niche.

Before using the SEMRush tool you need to find a competitor within your niche and just as you searched for steam irons, best steam irons and steam iron reviews you need to do the same in Google and see if you can spot a site that is solely focused on your niche and that shows up for all three or two or in at least one of the keywords. You will definitely be able to spot one but you could always change the terms up a little to find the ones that show up on various occasions, for example by searching for top steam irons or best steam irons 2015, etc. The more appearances the better, if you can’t find a site that is really dedicated solely to your niche.

So because I am targeting the UK I will go to Google.co.uk and input the terms mentioned above and within seconds I have spotted a site that appears for pretty much all my terms. uksteamirons.co.uk. Boom found him and it is a gem for our keyword research and the foundation to our SEO research.

So by inputting the domain we just found in the SEMRush tool we can see already a snapshot of how much traffic they get from SEO (Organic Search Traffic), just over 4k visitors for February and a few terms that are driving traffic to the site. It is these terms that we want to investigate more in detail so click on Organic Keywords.

Once clicked we get a much better picture of all the terms and even how many top 10 rankings and Top 1 ranks they have. We can even sort by the terms that are giving the the most traffic or the terms that have the most search volume.

For example the term steam generator iron reviews is bringing the site around 15% of their search traffic which is around 500 visitors. And the term that has the most search volume that they currently receive traffic from is steam generator iron which has around 10000 searches every month. Because they rank at 18th for this term that is something that they could improve on but again that is not our concern right now.

So looking at the terms a little more we can see that the term philips azur iron which has 1300 searches a month didn’t even appear on the Adwords Keyword Tool yet our competitor has found the term and developed content for it and is actually gaining traffic from it.

Now with all these keywords that are bringing our competitor UKSTEAMIRONS traffic are the terms we need to be looking to target and will become the subject of the pages that we need to create.

So posts that we would need to start writing would be titled:

steam generator iron

bosch steam generator iron

tefal steam generator iron reviews , etc.

And you can repeat the experiment with more competitors. Remember there is a tool for everything for your SEO needs and SEMRush is the best tool to spy on your competitors in order to see what terms are driving them traffic and the most important tool to do your Keyword Research. Click here to see SEMRush in action. It is bloody awesome and my favourite tool so far!!!

First and foremost welcome all. This blog is meant for everyone that wants to research and investigate more on what SEO is in-depth and where it is heading in the future.

I hope you all enjoy my posts and we will be looking at every SEO aspect both on and off-site all online leading sites possess, we then will be comparing the top 3 ranked sites (excluding wikipedia) on Google against each other for every well searched key phrase within every industry and analyzing what SEO Metrics they have in common and which factors seem to be the most valuable.